Michelle Gagnon - The Gatekeeper

“So missing last week didn’t faze you?”

“Hey, it’s not like he was caught diddling kids. I got three of those right now, one of ’em keeps trying to move on to school property. Mack was small-time, supposed to be the muscle in a botched bank robbery. Got talked into it by some buddies, then took the fall when it went south.”

“This time he might have abducted a sixteen-year-old girl.”

The PO shrugged. “So I’ll issue a warrant. Lots of fucked-up shit in the world. All I can do is try to swim through without drinking it.”

“Nice analogy.” Jake cast one last gaze around the room. “Bit of an accent there. Where you from?”

The guy hesitated before saying, “ Mississippi.”

“Yeah? You’re a long way from home.” Jake eyed him. “What brought you to Stockton?”

“The weather.”

“Huh.” Jake glanced out the window. Stockton was in California ’s Central Valley, a region that turned into a choking dust bowl each summer. It had to be a hundred degrees outside, convection-oven territory. “So you got any leads on Krex’s known acquaintances?”

“Not much in the file, but I’ll give you what I got. If you’re done, I got a crap-load of paperwork to do.”

Jake followed the PO out. Beating himself up didn’t help matters, but he couldn’t seem to stop. He was the one who told Randall to take a hard line, refusing to continue without proof of life. It was a dangerous dance, bartering over a person’s well-being. What he’d recommended was Kidnap and Ransom 101, the baseline that any kidnapper should have recognized. Problem was, they were apparently engaged in a different tango.

The video clip was less than a minute long, shot so close it was impossible to tell what was happening to Madison. Nothing audible but her screams, nothing to show that it was filmed yesterday or a week ago. Jake hadn’t pointed that out, figuring Randall was too rattled to handle it. He had to give him a serious pep talk before sending him off to work this morning. Randall drove away slowly, hands still shaking. Not that Jake blamed him. He couldn’t even imagine watching your kid undergo that kind of pain.

A hulking guy passed them on the stairs, shaved head, lots of tattoos. He glared at Jake.

“One sec.” Jake ducked down the dark hallway, past a pay phone to the door marked Manager in tarnished, crooked letters. Knocked once, and the guy who had let them into Mack’s room opened it. He was holding a fresh bottle of Bud.

“Yeah?”

“You got a list of all the tenants?”

The guy squinted at him. Jake felt the PO peering over his shoulder. The manager glanced at him, then back at Jake. “What for?”

“Just curious.”

“Don’t you need a warrant or something?”

“Sure, I could get one of those,” Jake bluffed. He had no idea what strings Syd had pulled to convince the PO that he was a federal marshal, but figured it was best to play along. “Or I could spend the day grilling every person who walks through that door. Maybe check some of the other rooms, see what I find. Up to you.”

The manager grunted and scratched himself. Clearly Jake wasn’t winning friends and influencing people in Stockton. Maybe it was outside his target demographic. Without another word the manager turned and shuffled off. A second later he returned with a smudged spreadsheet. “Here.”

“Thanks.” Jake tucked it under his arm, then strode down the hallway. The PO fell in step behind him. Maybe Jake was being paranoid, but he half expected to feel a knife in his back.

Alone in the car five minutes later, he rang Syd.

“Anything?” she asked, sounding breathless.

“Are you jumping rope back there?”

“Give me a break, I was across the office dealing with something. Any leads on Krex?”

“Not really. Just finished up at his place, now I’m headed to where he used to work. I got some names for you to run down.” He read them off, made sure she had the right spelling. “Another thing. Get me background info on Krex’s PO and find out who owns that boardinghouse.”

“Okay.” The sound of typing in the background. “Am I looking for anything specific?”

Jake glanced back at the building, three ramshackle stories that in happier times had been painted bright yellow. “Something feels off here. The PO was too laidback about Krex slipping off his radar, and there are a bunch of doppelgängers shacked up there, too.”

“Not unusual. Can’t imagine many places rent to ex-cons.”

“I know, but still. Look into it. Might be nothing, but…”

“Hey, I’m not complaining, it’s good to have something to do. I was down to arranging my pens by color.”

“We only bought blue pens.”

“You see my problem.”

Jake grinned. “All right. I’ll check in later.”

“Later, partner.”

Jake sat for a moment, drumming his fingers idly on the steering wheel. Mack Krex had slid off the grid, not unusual for an ex-con. But then he turned up at the airport as part of an elaborate plan to kidnap a sixteen-year-old girl in exchange for nuclear secrets. Someone was pulling the strings here, and he’d bet it wasn’t a third-rate felon with an eighth grade education. He pressed Redial and waited for Syd to pick up. “Hey, can you get me in to see the warden at Corcoran? Maybe he knows more than the PO.”

“Sure thing.”

Jake hung up and shifted the car into Drive. The fast-food joint where Mack used to work was a mile away. Unless something shook loose there, they were pretty much back where they started. And Madison was running out of time.

Randall sipped nervously at his cappuccino, trying not to look as terrified as he felt. He had left work shortly after arriving, complaining of a stomach bug. Barry, no stranger to intestinal distress, agreed to cover for him. And the truth was he’d been nauseous ever since that awful video last night. He clenched his fists at the memory. Randall wished again that he was someone different, the kind of guy who would find the people responsible and wring their necks. Unfortunately, he had to rely on Syd and Jake to do that for him. And so far, they hadn’t really helped.

He was sitting in a park on the outskirts of Concord, a patch of green etched out between office buildings. Like most of the East Bay, the town was a mix of strip malls, office parks and suburban neighborhoods wound around cul-de-sacs. To his immediate right a bronze memorial to 9/11 read, “Through blurred eyes we find the strength and courage to soar beyond the moment.” Under the current circumstances, it struck him as particularly ironic.

Randall glanced at his watch again: 11:00 a.m. He’d arrived late, there was construction on the 680 and traffic had slowed to a crawl. A shadow blocked the light, and he squinted up. A man stood over him, head cocked to the side. He was white, medium-build, wiry-looking; not the same guy who first approached him. Dressed in jeans and a black long-sleeved shirt despite the weather, his features masked by aviator sunglasses and a Giants baseball cap. Randall’s throat closed up with rage at the sight of him. He gripped the bench’s armrest to prevent himself from doing something stupid.

“Dr. Grant, right?” His voice was a chain smoker’s rasp. “You got something for me?”

Randall reached into his jacket pocket for the flash drive. The guy’s hand clamped down on his wrist, stopping him. “Don’t get cute, Grant.”

“You tell that son of a bitch he fucked up by hurting my daughter,” Randall said. “I told him I’d get it, I just needed more time…”

“You give us what we want when we ask for it. You knew that was part of the deal. Can’t stall and expect nothing to happen.”

“I want my daughter back.”